With 4 cup finals to go the 1st team arrived (at various times) at the North Face of Bidborough, a scene of few wins and many a loss. A win was vital if we were to maintain any hope of winning the title and winning the toss would be a good start. With heads called and we will have a bat uttered the team waited on tenterhooks to find out which skipper had spoken those words, the plucky young skipper had of course.

As we have all become accustomed to Noel and Lewis started us off and they started us off very nicely indeed. With no Frogbox and no balls faced recorded on the scorebook it is difficult to recall the speed at which runs accumulated but from memory Noel was striking around 200 with Lewis around 40. Or was it the other way round? Lewis changed bat mid way through, then possibly broke Pep / Jason’s bat and then went back to his original bat. In between bats there were 4s up the Eiger and 6s down the Eiger with the gormless tennis players scattering like ants as a giant foot came to squash them each time. Lewis brought up his 50 and the opening pair celebrated yet another 100 opening partnership before Lewis departed for a well made 60 with the score at 106/1, Noel somewhere between 0 and 28 not out.

Joe joined Noel in the middle but sadly Noel departed soon after, possibly before drinks although probably after, for a well made 28 and both Benj and Milo added 9 and 8 to the score respectively. With the score on 157/4 possibly from 26 overs (?) Pep joined Joe who had spent the past few overs mistiming balls to various parts of the ground but with each mistimed shot the next shot sounded ever so close to being timed. With Pep joining the timing show the pair put on a beautiful partnership with shots played all around the ground, some good, some very good, some less good.

Now the eagle eyed regular reader may have noticed at this point that there is a lack of depth to this review. This is in part down to the lack of Frogbox, as previously mentioned, but the day before the game the opposition captain had suggested that the tea at the innings break would be a good one. As such the author and skipper and possibly unnamed keeper was somewhat distracted thinking about the culinary delights that awaited at the bowls club down the hill. However, he can remember some striking shots from Pep and 2 absolutely beautiful 4s from Joe in the last over, dancing down the wicket, hitting one perfectly straight past the bowler and the other through extra cover. Lovely. At the end of the innings Joe finished on a superb 82 not out and Pep 41 not out which is a beautiful sight for the OCD readers out there (as long as they are not uncomfortable with odd numbers of course). The pair put on a partnership of 107 which largely went unnoticed at the time, as a result of oxygen deprivation due to the altitude, putting us on a superb total of 264/4 on a really tricky track. Crucially, when adding the score to play cricket on behalf of the oppo skipper, none of the scores actually added up to 264, they actually added up to 260 but we will put that down to either the bends or altitude sickness, whichever is the right one, and say no more about it.

Tea

Wow. What. A. Tea. A better spread I cannot remember. Some kind of 3 cheese sandwich, proper coronation chicken sandwiches, tomato mozzarella and basil for the veggies, 4 or 5 different homemade sausage rolls including a delightful chorizo number, cakes galore with a lovely thin cheesecakey thing, scones, carrot cake. Jerry had declared a restart at 4:15pm and the skipper as usual wanted the warm up to begin early and for everyone to be in place at 4:10 but that wasn’t happening. Warm ups are for chumps. Teas are for champs.

Slowly the team emerged from the tea room and a slow lethargic warm up began. Lushy bowled the first over up the hill, with the massive hill on the left, Milo up the hill, with the massive hill on the right. First over in all we really learned was that their umpire loved a wide if the ball was not hitting one of the 3 stumps, which Alex took well. At the other end their umpire clearly wanted more tea and angrily told us to hurry up, clearly setting a field for a bowler’s first over is frowned upon in the Himalayas. First ball from Milo, snick, snaffled, The UK goes up, batsman is not moving but he is gone. Beautiful.

Lushy was in on the action next and after being forced to bowl nowhere but on the stumps he did exactly that knocking them over to send their number 3 back for more tea and not long after their reverse ramping number 4 was gone too, caught and bowled Lush. At 32/3 things felt good. Both Milo and Lushy bowled through their 9 looking for another breakthrough and both bowled incredibly well. Lushy took 2 for 40 from his 9 with 1 maiden and Milo went for a miserly 13 runs from his 9 overs including 3 maidens. A good start.

With Jimbo up the hill and Pep up the other side of the hill we were searching for another breakthrough. Their number 5 had opened his shoulders resulting in some fielding changes with Benj running out to long on muttering “no shit Sherlock”, possibly because of the golf hat worn by the aforementioned number 5 or possibly because of the massive 6 he had just hit down the ground. Not to worry though Pep nicked him off with his first ball, snaffled by the soon to be named keeper. 72/4.

Around this time Bidborough were not really going for it but at the same time going for it a little bit and with a partnership building the ball was thrown to Benj and Joe to spin a web of control and see the game home. Benj struck first removing their number 5 with a very good catch from Westy and then again bowling their opener. 2 big wickets which was effectively the game won with the score now 148/6 and the partnership well and truly broken. It was Joe’s turn next and he took the next 3 wickets, the first caught Benj, the second caught Joe and the third caught Westy. Some very good bowling, excellent catching and truly magnificent field placements.

One more wicket to take and it was Benj with a beauty drawing their batsman forward and lets just say with his “natural momentum” he could not stop moving forward leaving a regulation stumping for the skipper behind the stumps. All out for 168 from 37.3 overs (even though the opposition scorers had thought we had bowled 38.3 overs inexplicably which again can only be put down to one thing, poor education). There were some top fielding performances across the whole team on a difficult outfield with a gradient akin to Alpe d’Huez. Wickets for Pep, Lush and Milo and then finished off by the Spin Icons Benj and Joe, Benj with 3 wickets for 10, 1 maiden from his 5.3 overs and Joe 3 for 24 from his 6. Another win under the belt and the yellow jersey retained after back to back wins away to Bidborough. An immense tea, a brilliant batting performance notably from Joe (82*), Lewis (60) and Pep (41*), and a superb collective bowling performance to finish things off. 3 more cup finals to go.